12 comments:

In case anyone was wondering (?), the lettering on the water tower reads: "SME Lancers", and refers (?) to the Lancers of Shawnee Mission East High School, Prairie Village, Kansas (part of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area).

Water tower? That’s what they want us to believe. These creatures, these so-called water towers, are from outer space; they stalk the land on giant metal legs; they lurk silently outside restrooms at night, make futile attempts to hide behind real American trees, waiting, sucking up all the water in Kansas, in the world. I saw the movie.

Hazen, don't look now but you've just gone and reinforced a Primal Fear.

I remain subject to odd memories of certain doomy, mysterious water tower legends remembered from early childhood -- when every two-bit burg was precariously hovered over by one of those fat bulbous structures from another dimension.

A lot of them are still around.

One water tower I find somewhat ominous, for example, is that of the Victor Balata Belting Company in Easton, Pa., a supplier to the aerospace industry of tapes and nets for "aircraft arresting systems".

This is a remarkably effective and memorable presentation. I think I will always associate this poem and this sequence and arrangement of photographs. I have to say that I really admire your water tower scholarship; Easton, PA (located in my telephone area code and not far from here; my college roommate teaches there) is rarely mentioned, even in our local weather reports. That's a nice spooky water tower. Curtis

Illusions of liberty (we're still waiting for the real thing) must inform 99% of public architectural iconography in the "Land of the Free".

As the republic grows ever more enchained to the all-purpose corporate marketing-model of indiscriminate positivity ("Have a nice day, and buy now!!"), the thin veneer of deception must be applied in ever brighter, simpler colours, much as with children's toys, to maintain the underlying illusion. So we have the phenomenon of the painted-over water tower, dressed up in happy rainbow colours to resemble, say, a hot air balloon -- yay, fun!!

These may be found in some of the most desolate of locations -- take, for example, the York, Nebraska water tower, viewed out the window of a long-haul trucker during a blizzard, in the penultimate shot here.

But that impressive Warley water tower of WB's, now, suggests a more sophisticated form of camouflage. A multi-purpose installation, perhaps, with slots in the battlements for heroic Brum bowmen to conduct a stalwart defence against those always tiresome Norse invaders; though that thick cluster of anachronistic add-ons (mobile phone antennae was my guess, too) somewhat detracts from the effect... giving rise to unfortunate considerations re. the potential bother for the archers on the parapets in having to shoot around such awkward obstacles, or worse -- perish the thought! -- take the chance of launching an arrow straight into the tender quick of an important message before the spook monitor net has been able to capture the full metadata.

But oh, the theremin! Greatest of Russian inventions (after only television, of course). Spooky instrument extraordinaire! Untouchable! Even by spooks!

Ed Wood (or for that matter a woodchuck) would have got a spine-shiver or two if he'd been here in the haunted house back in the epoch of the legendary recording sessions for a totally sub-radar project involving performance of passages from a text I had composed about a curious hillbilly savant. The engineer brought along his theremin, and played it (no hands, of course), and that was a mysteriously brilliant moment in the long night of some other century.

This is the guy -- like Pamelia Kurstin a genius of innovative sound design -- pictured with one of his peculiar musical inventions.

"Now he cared only about signs." I find that line startling. Reading the poem in light of the tower photographs reinforces the feeling of disorientation. No parking any time, indeed. Powerful post!-David

Well, I see that our friend David has pulled up at the water tower in search of the one thing he will be denied, a parking space. Now I call that hard, given what those bossy movie types have been putting him through back at his native precinct..

I listened to the 1973 rendition of the poem on PennSound two days ago

Now I can't get the memories of Saturday mornings out of my head ... the windows open and a vacuum cleaner running drowning all else out with the illusion that cleanliness is some kind of guarantee of wholeness (because I live in a godless universe?)

As if all the water in those towers would ever wash our hands clean .....